December 25, 2011

peppermint bark

Merry Christmas lovelies!

I wanted to do something fun with my siblings for Christmas Eve so I decided to venture on my first candy/chocolate creation: peppermint bark. I love peppermint chocolate so I couldn't be more excited when I found out this was one of the simplest candy recipes ever.

Peppermint Bark

a couple things:

12oz semi-sweet chocolate chips

12oz white chocolate chips

10 candy canes

First line a baking pan with a non-stick sheet or parchment. This is where your candy will take hold. In a microwavable bowl, melt the semi-sweet chocolate chips in microwave at 20 second intervals. After each interval, stir with a spoon or rubber spatula (or with a rice scoop like me >_<). You MUST heat only in these short time intervals because chocolate is a very delicate ingredient that can burn quickly, so it must be heated in this controlled procedure. It took about total of 60 seconds to melt all of the chocolate smoothly. Pour the semi-sweet chocolate into the pan and smooth it out flat with your spatula. Now let this layer cool off in the refrigerator for a good 30-40 minutes. At this time, put your candy canes inside of a ziploc bag and hammer the crap out of them to lil pieces. My brother had a lot of fun with that :)

Next repeat the melting process with your white chocolate chips and pour it on top of the cooled semi-sweet chocolate layer. Now sprinkle the peppermint pieces on top of the white chocolate and gently push them in. You can also mix the peppermint with the melted white chocolate first, but I found this made the white chocolate harden up, so it wasn't that easy to spread when pouring out onto the pan. Now cool for another 40-60 minutes. Enjoy!!

TIPS and NOTES

1. This was the first time I dealt with melting chocolate so I first read that using a double boiler is the way to go to make it perfect. I tried this and wow this process was very long and tedious. Plus I didn't read before hand that when melting chocolate comes in contact with any one drop of water, it seizes up instantly and thus makes it unmeltable. So in my double boiler, I had put the boiling water too high and there was so much condensation that it dripped into my bowl of chocolate. Wasted. But apparently this method is what true professionals use to make perfectly smooth chocolate.

2. I said screw it and used a microwave. Like I said before, chocolate burns easily, so you really want to control the heating process and I found the 20-sec interval process flawless. I didn't change the power settings at all. Remember to always use a completely dry spoon or spatula when mixing your chocolate. Plus this method was SUPER quick and easy, just the way I like it to be :) The chocolate turned out to be smooth too, so I really did not see a noticeable difference or lack in quality.

Stephanie, thank you so much for your comment! I love your blog name! My biggest piece of advice is to get yourself out there, when I first started blogging I commented on many, many blogs and regularly commented people back! I think it's good to be connected with your readers, it keeps them coming back. I also didn't start posting my blog link on my Lookbook until months later, and once I did, I noticed traffic increased immensely. So make use out of any other social media site you have like Twitter, etc.! And of course, have your own unique voice, because so many blogs out there are such identical copies of each other that sometimes they start getting really repetitive.

By the way, I have to keep this recipe in mind! One of my friends bought me peppermint bark for Christmas and it was deliciousss. I totally didn't think about making my own :)

Love this! I just saw a similar recipe this afternoon, but it was only using chocloate chips. You combined the recipe with white chocolate -- how interesting! I'll definitely have to test this out! I'm now following, by the way. :)